Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, former Lagos state governor has stated that he does not feel optimistic about celebrating Nigeria’s 54th Independence in an elaborate fashion.
According to a press statement released by the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, on Monday, 29 September, 2014, Nigerians suffer from poor leadership, while the nation is yet to fulfill its potential.
“We commemorate this Independence Day because the nation has survived despite its many challenges. We dare not celebrate because the nation has not flourished as it should. 54 years our national trek began with hope and promise, peace and unity.
“Today, the nation staggers beneath the weight of trouble stacked upon problem multiplied by hardship. Peace and unity seem to have yielded the moment to violence and discord.
“We exist as a political unit on a map but we do not prosper as brothers and sisters in one nation, under one flag and pursuant to one accord,” he began.
Insisting that he is proud to be a Nigerian, Tinubu noted however, that “genuine patriotism should not induce blindness” and therefore urged Nigerians to focus on the problems that remain unresolved.
Speaking about the upcoming celebrations of the October 1 Independence Day, the APC Chieftain confessed that: “this is not a time for fake cheers and elation at the present state of things just because the calendar has touch this day. We need to use this hour soberly by taking stock of the obstacles mounting before us and of the hard direction in which we seem to be heading.
“I fear this direction, if further taken, will lead us not home but to an appointment with failure and national destitution”. Tinubu criticized the current administration over hindering the country’s progress because of the adopted direction.
“Nigeria is currently saddled with the reprobate leadership Awo, Zik, Sardauna and Tafawa Belewa feared. We have entered unchartered territory not so much because we are expanding the outer bounds of national progress.
“We traverse such ground because this government leads us into places where angles fear to tread and where sensible man should not go.
“Never has an elected government in Nigeria employed religion as a tool to divide the people, setting Nigerian brother against brother in a manner that allows this administration to function at the basest level of governance while seeking to establish a political domination that seeks no greater purpose than its self perpetuation.
“Our nation was supposed to advance, year by year, toward greater democracy. Instead, we rush into the pit of arbitrary, imperious rule that smacks of despotism,” he noted.
Tinubu enumerated Nigeria’s problems and challenges concluding that those were not reasons for celebration, but the “troubling signals” that should awake the nation.
He said: “the incessant attempts to stigmatize and physically intimidate a peaceful political opposition and the militarization of elections are features of a perverse democracy, a democracy run at gun-point and with a swift and eager trigger.
“Brazen assaults on the judiciary, the flippant and frequent violation of the constitution and the rule of law, and the elevation of corruption to making it a new and perhaps the strongest arm of government are the instruments that now shape our nation.
“These things are not the fare of celebration. They are the impetus for political reform and change.”
In his statement Tinubu said the 16 years of ruling by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) pulled the country back adding that “the longer they rule, the less benefit the people derive”.
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